Editor’s note: I don’t know anyone who travels who has not been scammed, knowingly or unknowingly. I’ve paid more for taxis than I should, whether unmarked or those who circle blocks to run up the meter. I’ve certainly been afraid of haggling at markets, paying more than necessary, though for things I’ve wanted (so if it was worth it as a price to me, was it really a scam?). I’ve had Airbnb hosts try to scam me into paying more, and Uber drivers try to extort me outside the app. TRT writer Sam shares some of the scams he has encountered, and others he has heard of, and there are countless others out there. Just be wary; don’t take these as reasons not to travel. The biggest taxi scam I ever encountered was in New York. For more of Sam’s writing, much more focused on the many positives, click here to visit his index page.
Obviously, I love traveling. However, when you travel and go to explore a new place, there are unfortunately people out there who look to take advantage of you. As I walk around in my baseball cap, taking photos with my smartphone, I scream “American tourist” just by looking at me, particularly when I travel to a place where few people look like me, and inevitably, there are people who just see a giant dollar sign above my head and want to exploit that. As I write so frequently about my positive travel experiences, I figured that I would share with you some scams I have witnessed or fallen victim to in this article to hopefully prevent you from experiencing them as well.
1. Getting pickpocketed by abuelas in the Otavalo Market in Ecuador
The first time I really got ripped off traveling was when I was 17 years old and in the famous indigenous market in Otavalo, Ecuador. Being a 6’0” tall white guy who had a camera pouch around his neck, I definitely stood out like a sore thumb. As I walked through the market, I tried to prevent pickpocketers by keeping my hands in my pockets and my wallet in my front pocket. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a group of elderly Ecuadorian women, none of whom could have been more than 5’0” tall themselves, surrounded me in a circle and started pushing me in circles while I could feel their tiny hands going into each of my pockets. As one grabbed my wallet, she shouted to her friends and they all scattered in different directions with me being unsure who took my wallet.
How could I have prevented this robbery? I now often will keep money in a pouch around my neck and carry just a little bit of cash in my pocket when I am in a marketplace. I also at times have put rubber bands on my wallet and keep my wallet in my front pocket. With the rubber bands, the wallet will snag on your jeans and that way it will be harder for them to take it.
2. Times Square Elmos and other characters
Without a doubt, if you have been to Times Square in New York, you have seen people dressed up as Minnie Mouse, Elmo, and other beloved children’s characters offering to take a picture with you. It is of course expected to give these folks some money; after all this is how they earn their living. However, when I was in Times Square and decided to get a picture with one character who a preschool student of mine loved, I was shocked to see that all the other costumed individuals started jumping into the picture too and demanding money afterwards. Not only that, I figured taking ten seconds to get a picture with someone was worth $2 or $3, but all the characters started harassing me demanding $20 for a photo.
What should I have done to prevent this from happening? If I really wanted a picture with one of the characters, I should have first agreed on a price beforehand. Do not accept them saying, “Whatever you want” as acceptable; agree to a price. Also, make sure you have a friend or other tourist take your picture, not one of the costumed characters, as they may refuse to give you your phone/camera back until you pay them the extortion fee they demand.
3. Fast-hand taxi drivers in Bangkok
After over 20 hours of flying, I finally arrived at night in Bangkok, completely exhausted. I took a taxi to my hostel and was half asleep. The taxi driver got me to my hostel and asked me for the payment which was about 300 Thai Baht. I thought I handed him a 500 Baht bill and he handed it back to me and said this was only a 50 Baht bill. Confused, I pulled out some more money and paid him and went on my way. After I got out of the taxi I counted my money and found that I was 450 Baht short. Well, it turns out that all the Thai money has the same picture of the king on it; taxi drivers run a common scam of switching a 500 Baht bill with a 50 Baht bill very quickly before you can notice and I fell victim to this scam.
What could I have done to prevent this? Slow down and take your time to look at the money. When handing it to the taxi driver, keep your eye on the money at all times and declare out loud “I am handing you a 500 Baht bill” and give it over slowly, showing it to the driver.
4. Non-metered Israeli taxis
Now let me start off by saying that it’s unfair to beat up on the Israeli taxi drivers for this as getting ripped off by taxi drivers has happened to me in too many countries to count. However, Israeli taxi drivers all have meters in their taxis. They often, especially with tourists, will not want to use the meter and will name their own price. When my brother took a taxi in Jerusalem when I lived there, they charged him easily three times what the cost should have been.
How can you prevent getting ripped off? Insist to the taxi driver that they use the meter. They might claim it is broken; this is a lie. If it is broken, they cannot legally drive their taxi. Also ask for a receipt printed by the receipt printer. This makes it so they have to declare the ride and reduces the chances of them scamming. If you do not use the meter, check with your hotel beforehand on what a cab ride should cost and agree to this before departing. In the rideshare age, using rideshares can help prevent getting ripped off too.
5. The metered Serbian taxi
I fell for a dumb scam in Serbia. When I left the airport in Belgrade, a guy asked me if I wanted a taxi and I said yes. He had me follow him to his car and then turned on a meter that was on his phone with some app and started running up a price of about $5 a minute. I told him that I was going to call the police and demanded to be let out and he then agreed to take me to my hotel for a fair price. I am lucky he did not beat me up for this.
How could I have prevented this? In this scam, any shred of common sense I had went out the window. Always make sure you get a licensed taxi and at an airport there is typically a taxi booth where they will get you a licensed taxi at a predetermined rate. Do not go with people who approach you for a taxi.
6. Car rental places
Speaking of Serbia, I got scammed by a car rental place there too. I picked up my car in the middle of the night when it was pitch black out. When I returned the car they pointed out a scratch on the hubcap that I am confident that I did not cause and tried to charge me hundreds of dollars for it. After a lot of arguing, they found something less expensive that was problematic to still charge me for as a compromise.
How to prevent this scam: When renting a car, do not just inspect the car, but take a video. If, like the situation I was in, it was pitch black out, ask the rental company to move the car to a well-lit area so that you can get the video. That way, if they claim there was anything later, you can refer back to the video. Make sure you get an employee in the video. While this scam happened in Belgrade, it can happen anywhere.
7. Rental cars in Iceland
While rental car agencies in many places are rip-offs, Iceland takes it to a new level. There are several car rental agencies in Iceland that will charge you a whopping $12,000 deposit. If you cannot cover this exorbitant amount, they can give you a lesser deposit amount for a higher fee. Also, in Iceland they will look for volcanic ash to scratch the car. A note too about Iceland: people let their sheep roam the whole island freely and they will commonly be in the middle of the road. However, if you hit someone’s sheep that is standing in the middle of the highway, YOU have to pay the owner for the cost of a new sheep. Yes, sheep always have right of way, even in the middle of a highway in Iceland. Both my father and I had rental car agencies claim we got parking tickets in Iceland, yet we never did and they could not produce the ticket and they charged us large processing fees for covering the ticket.
What to do about these scams: There isn’t much that you can do to prevent these scams from happening, unfortunately; however, like I said in #6, take a good video of the car beforehand. With the ticket claim, we contested the charge with our credit cards and they were removed. I would also suggest you find out how much the deposit is for the rental car and make sure your credit line covers it and I highly recommend getting a car with unlimited gas mileage, as you will need it in Iceland.
8. Markets, souks and bazaars
Something I have learned from my time in the Middle East: do not accept the first price they offer you in a market as they are massively inflated for tourists. In Morocco, I especially found this to be true and locals were astonished when they heard how much I paid in Marrakesh’s Jemaa el Fna for pictures with the cobras and monkeys. Likewise, look for counterfeit items in markets. In Mexico, someone insisted he was selling Cuban cigars, which were actually not from Cuba, and precious handmade handicrafts and artifacts in markets are often mass produced objects from China.
How to prevent these scams: Always negotiate. I often like to offer between 10-25% of the first price they give me and negotiate up from there. Don’t be afraid to walk away as seeing if the price suddenly drops or not is an indicator if they are giving you a fair price. With that said, do not be a jerk. I remember in Peru watching a European guy try to barter with a vendor who was selling her handmade handicrafts by offering her $1; do not insult the people. To prevent counterfeit items, go to a reputable store that has certificates of authenticity. Do your research ahead of time.
9. Cash in change in other countries
While in the United States, if I get a crinkled bill or one with a small tear in it, it is not a big deal, I have found that in many countries nobody will accept a bill that has such defects. With that said, I have found that vendors love to give me such bills in change because nobody else will take them and then I cannot spend them anywhere.
How to prevent this: Refuse to take bills with defects in them. Also, I like to use ATMs in other countries as the bills that come from them are typically crisp and real. I have heard stories of people exchanging money with folks on the street and being given counterfeit bills.
10. Marijuana and corrupt police
I will start off by saying that I do not partake in marijuana and so I have not fallen victim to this scam. Firstly, unless you know that recreational marijuana (or any drug for that matter) is legal in the country you are in, DO NOT DO IT. I have heard stories of how known drug dealers will work with the police to target tourists and sell drugs to a tourist, who they know is a one-time purchaser, then tell the police, who give the drug dealer a kickback, and who then arrest the purchaser. When I was in Southeast Asia, I met a young woman who got caught smoking marijuana in Vang Vieng, Laos and was taken to jail. She was only released when she gave the police officers a couple thousand dollars in bribes. In countries that the United States has poor relationships with, minor drug offenses have been used as justification to impose lengthy prison sentences on American tourists (see Brittney Griner for reference).
How to prevent being in this situation: Stay away from recreational drugs in other countries where they are not legal!
11. Alcohol and nightclubs in Croatia
I am so glad that I got a warning about this beforehand. I read that at nightclubs in Croatia, a tourist will order a drink or they will have beautiful women planted in the nightclub to try to coax you into buying a bottle of alcohol. When it is time for to pay the bill, that drink might be a couple hundred dollars and that bottle of alcohol thousands. If you refuse to pay, a rather large and aggressive bouncer will make sure you do pay as you can decide which is more affordable, your hospital bill or the drink. In Split, Croatia, a club tried to get me to fall victim to this scam but I did not order anything.
How to prevent this scam: Ask for a menu with prices before ordering and take a picture of the menu, or just do not order alcohol if you think you might be in such an establishment.
12. The shoe shiners of Istanbul
When walking through the streets of Istanbul, you will likely encounter poor men walking the street holding shoeshine equipment, offering to shine locals’ shoes. As you walk behind these folks, they may happen to “drop” their brush or another piece of equipment. Common decency and natural reaction is to chase them down and give them the item they dropped. Upon doing so, the “grateful” shoeshine guy will insist on shining your shoes for you as his way of repaying your kindness only to then guilt you into paying for a service you did not want.
How to prevent this scam: keep walking.
13. Asking for directions in Morocco
Of all the places that I have been, the cities of Fez and Marrakesh in Morocco are the most disorienting. There is a part of me that is surprised that I am not still stuck in the alleyways of Morocco trying to find my way out of them, and part of me wishes that I still was. However, have no fear (or maybe do); there will be plenty of Moroccans, young and old, who will be hanging out on the alleyways looking for lost travelers and will take you to your hotel or wherever you are looking to go, but will expect a few dollars in return. While sometimes I was happy to pay a couple bucks to get to where I needed to go, there were other times where I knew exactly where I was going and had these kids and adults alike following me and then once I got to my destination asking me for money for “helping” me when they actually did not.
How to prevent this scam: As I mentioned, it sometimes was worth it to give out a couple of bucks as opposed to being lost forever. However, when I walked to my destination and had someone follow me trying to hit me up for money, I just told them to leave me alone and eventually they did. I went to Morocco in 2013 and Google maps was not a thing back then; today, I would rely on an app like this and find my way to my hotel.
14. “Honeytraps” in other countries
As a male traveler, particularly when I have been solo traveling, there have been many times that young women have tried to get me to pay for stuff for them. Obviously, be weary that there is an agenda here that is purely financial and they are not necessarily interested in you. Why I write about this though is that Egypt completely flipped the script. When I was 22 years old and planning to go to Egypt and was newly single, I read that there were older European women who often were looking to hook up with younger guys. As a 22 year old, my interpretation of “older European women” was that there were some 30 year old women looking for younger guys and I was pretty excited about that. No. What I saw in Luxor in particular was women in their 60s and 70s with their arms around muscular young Arab men who were getting them to pay for everything for them.
How to avoid this scam: Just know what their agenda is and either avoid it or accept it. Be careful to not let lust result in emptying your bank account or bringing a new exotic lover back to your home country who will likely dump you as soon as they get there and no longer need you.
15. Holy sites in Israel and elsewhere
There are so many holy sites in Israel and throughout the world. Here’s the thing: take these claims with a grain of salt because there is no proof that what allegedly happened there actually happened there. In fact, I recently went to the “Tomb of Daniel” in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, which is one of six different tombs of Daniel in the Middle East and Central Asia. However, the scam to avoid is what is sold often at these sites, especially the Christian holy sites in Israel. Often, I see claims that a certain event relating to Jesus occurred exactly at a particular falafel stand, where the owner will happily sell you the most expensive falafel in Israel. Similarly, kids there will fill up water bottles from their sink and sell it to tourists as water from the Jordan River (in fairness that is where the sink water comes from).
How to prevent this scam: So, is this a scam? It depends. You definitely have folks who are looking to exploit tourists. However, for the faithful, you can also have incredible memories that are formed here that are priceless, and so perhaps if you are seeing these sites as a religious pilgrimage, you will remember supposedly eating a falafel where Jesus hung out more than that you paid twice what a falafel should cost. But if you are seeing these sites more as a tourist attraction, then maybe get your falafel elsewhere.
So yes, I have seen these scams and been victim to many of them. Sadly, I am sure that I will fall victim to many more in the future that I have not even thought of yet. However, it is important to put these scams in perspective. I remember when I was 17 and had my wallet stolen by those old ladies in Ecuador. I sat there afterwards near tears as I had had $80 in that wallet, a fortune for a teenager. Somebody came up and told me that that $80 was also a fortune to the women who stole from me, and in Ecuador, that would probably enable them to buy food for their family for a whole month. Oftentimes people steal from and scam tourists because it is their means of survival, not necessarily because they are bad people. Also, my biggest regret is not the times that I fell victim to a scam, but rather, that when instances like the Thai taxi scam occurred, that I wasted so much energy on my trip being upset that I got scammed out of about $20. Unfortunately, getting scammed sometimes comes with the privilege of having the opportunity to travel the world, a privilege that most never can afford. My advice: try to avoid the scams but keep the cash on you small so that when you do fall victim to one, you do not let that temporary frustration dampen your experience in a new place and culture where I can guarantee that the majority of the people there are kind and happy that you are there.
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